DIY Miniatures Case

My various fantasy minis have, for some time, been stored in various less-than-ideal containers. Earlier this month, I finally made a case for them.

The method is similar to most of the cases I've built in the past. It starts with a a Plano 1401 Protector 4 Pistol case. The stock case comes with two sheets of eggshell foam and a flat sheet on the top. I used sheets of pluck foam leftover from previous projects. After plucking out the compartments to the desired shape, I glued two of the pluck sheets together with contact cement, then added a base of thick EVA foam (the same stuff that Sabol uses) to make a deep tray. Note the custom-plucked compartments -- these are for the various unusual miniatures in my collection, and it's one of the best parts of making your own miniatures case.

Here's how it looks when it's almost finished. I still need to trim the EVA base.

And here it is with the minis inside.

And here's the whole package in the pistol case.

I've done a rather in-depth DIY of these kind of cases over at DakkaDakka, but my process has changed and refined over the years, so at some point I'll make an updated and revised version for the blog. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it is a hardshell miniature storage system that's just as protective at half the price (or less) of an equivalent soft-bag Sabol or Portable Warfare system.

It feels good to get these done. Now I can move on to a couple more projects, namely Josh's cemetery on a hill terrain piece and Tim's crashed helicopter.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

A Visit to Adepticon 2013

Mike and I spent Saturday at Adepticon. This was my first time at a gaming convention, and it was rewarding to see so many gamers congregating in one place. We got there bright and early at 9 a.m. when the vendor hall opened. The first thing I picked up was the swag bag! I registered late, so I got a small bag. Inside were a few assorted Secret Weapon bases, a Minitaire paint sample (orange), and two miniatures: a Brushfire fantasy mouse, and some sort of goat man with a flame thrower. Here they are:

I had a coupon in my swag bag for a free mini from Ninja Division to promote their Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter, so I visited their booth and picked out a Zentraedi Regult Battlepod. Unfortunately, their booth was packed, so I didn't get a chance to demo the game. From what I saw, the game looked really cool. The free mini is metal, although I believe the Kickstarter will be producing plastic figures.

I stopped by Forge World next and picked up a model that I have wanted for a while: a Dark Angels Venerable Dreadnought. I also snagged dual autocannon arms for it. I was hoping to pick up some Tau stuff, but they were already cleaned out, since Tau is the flavor of the week.

While wandering the vendor room, I spotted a familiar piece of terrain. A while back, I had helped Karl paint one of these buildings for our upcoming Little Wars event. I stopped at the booth to chat, and discovered Rust Forge LLC -- they work with Proxie Models, and were representing them at the convention. They had some great modular shipping crate kits available, so I picked up a three-pack. These can be built a number of different ways. Look for an in-depth review here soon!

My wife asked me to find her a wolf miniature. Always happy to please, I stopped by the WarGamma booth and picked up a rearing battle wolf.

With that important mission completed, we stopped by the Spikey Bits booth next. They were clearing out their 40k bits due to changes in Games Workshop's sales agreements. Mike took advantage of this, big time. Here's a list of what he picked up at Spikey Bits:

• 4 packs of Cadian shock troops 
• 5 heavy weapon squads 
• 4 sentinels 
• 21 kneeling legs 
• part of an IG heavy weapon team 
• a Space Wolves something or other gun 
• a space marine scout heavy bolter 
• three bits bags of heavy weapons crews 
• a tank commander with dual machine guns 
• four assembled shock troopers 
• some dice including a scatter die 
• a couple heavy weapon tripods 
• a pack of Necron warriors 
• two Basilisks that are missing the railing for the gun deck 

I think he cleared them out of Imperial Guard bits bags. I picked up a Warmachine Cygnar Battlegroup, because I like the models, although I have never played it before. I also bought a Tau Cadre Fireblade on sale. At this point, having dropped a sizable chunk of cash between the two of us, we decided to go check out some of the tournament and demo rooms. On the way to the main hall, though, I stopped at the Badger booth, and acquired a quick release attachment for my airbrushes.

The first place we visited in the main hall was the Wreck-Age display. I had heard a little about the game and was eager to learn more about it. The demo table was full, so I chatted for a while with Matt Sears from Hyacinth Games. Turns out he's a regular reader of the Chicago Skirmish Wargames blog! He explained the basics of the game and showed me the model line.

Once the demo table cleared, Mike and I sat down to try it out. It was a fun, streamlined post-apocalyptic ruleset set in a world being rebuilt by survivors. I really enjoyed it -- the game is very episodic, with continuity between scenarios. In the playtest, I fielded a faction called the Stakers, tasked with protecting a homestead. My goal was to stop the intruders at all costs. I only controlled two models: a guy with a rifle perched on a rooftop, and a guy patrolling near a fence with a shotgun. Here they are:

Mike was representing the Drifters, a group of nomads, looking to raid the settlement's food stores. His warband consisted of 1 human and a pair of boars strapped with explosives!

Mike's goal was to get the boars up to the fence so they could blow it up. He advanced, but I got in a lucky shot, hitting the first boar and detonating its explosives! The second boar died on the next turn, with the fence still intact. The Drifter retreated, planning to return in the next scenario with reinforcements. The homestead was safe! After the demo, we each picked out a free Wreck-Age mini from a big box of random figures.

After talking to the guys and playing the game, I was really excited about it, and picked up a special Adepticon-only starter set. It came with 14 minis (Stakers and Drifters, including exploding boars, of course!), a two-part resin fence, a dilapidated vendor cart, rules, counters, and scenarios. One really nice touch to this set is that it came with both standard slotted bases, and lipped bases for each figure! In addition, I bought a second vendor cart and some fantastic vagrant minis. These new additions will add some flavor to many different games.

Matt and I discussed having a Wreck-Age demo day with CSW at some point in the near future, so keep an eye out for news about that.

Shortly after that, Mike had to leave, so I decided to try out a Warmachine game (since I picked up a starter set, after all). I played a demo game and had a great time! I've already got a good start on my Cygnar faction.

Up next on my schedule was a painting seminar given by Les Bursly from AwesomePaintJob.com. He demonstrated some advanced airbrush techniques for lighting and gradient effects, and then showed us some fantastic weathering techniques, including paint chips, engine exhaust, and rust streaks. I'm going to try these out on the shipping crates I purchased.

He blew my mind when he showed us what he uses as a gloss coat: Pledge floor wax! For attending the seminar, I got a 12-pack of the new Minitaire Ghost Tints. These are fantastic airbrush-ready candy style paints. You can use them for tinting existing colors, or doing all sorts of special effects. On the way out I stopped by the Paulson Games table. He was still setting up, but took some time to talk with me about his conversion bits line, and his upcoming game Mecha Front. There will be a Kickstarter for this game starting soon, so keep an eye out.

It was a fantastic, but long day! I'm looking forward to next year. And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a huge new pile of stuff to build and paint!

-- Josh, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Fully Painted: Stonehaven Dwarven Adventurers

Last November, I received my batch of loot from the fully funded Stonehaven Dwarven Adventurers Kickstarter campaign. As this was the first (and to date, only) Kickstarter I've ever been a part of, I've gotta say it was a great experience. The Stonehaven guys sent out timely, informative updates throughout the process, and my miniatures (15 dwarves covering a ton of possible archetypes and loadouts) arrived basically on time.

Since then I've been working my way slowly through them. Here's the first batch of completed figures. From left, we have: bard, berserker, fallen king, necromancer, mage, rogue and highwayman. Very cool figures, with tons of character! Those are resin flagstone bases that were supplied with the Kickstarter. 

I undercoated these guys in light gray -- as opposed to black, my longtime undercoat -- and tried to give the figures a brighter, more colorful paintjob than I usually do. What can I say, the sculpts seem a bit more lighthearted than the typical dark fantasy guy from Reaper or Games Workshop.

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Auction Report: We Came, We Saw, We Bid

Last weekend a handful of us ventured out to Games Plus for the twice-yearly games auction. We made a point to attend the miniatures day, when thousands of minis -- boxed and loose, painted and unpainted -- were auctioned off in a marathon bidding session lasting from 10 a.m. to about 8 p.m. These photos are sort of a general look at the chaotic array of loot that was available at the auction.

A little bit of everything, eh?

Here at Chicago Skirmish Wargames, we added a whole bunch of cool new stuff to our coffers. In no particular order, here's what we carried out of the dungeon (er, Games Plus) at the end of the evening:

• 11-inch vinyl Cthulhu model kit, unassembled
• Warhammer Storm of Magic templates (extremely cool and useful to represent all manner of tabletop area effects)
• 2 40k dreadnoughts from the Assault on Black Reach box set -- one of the few ways to get multimelta dread arms!
• 40k manufactorum terrain kit, new on sprue
• A batch of 10 desert islands that could be used for Uncharted Seas or naval historical
• 4x4-foot Zuzzy gaming mat with a desert wasteland texture
• Undead dracolich and a few smaller undead dragons, poorly painted and ready to be stripped
• Assorted terrain pieces: jungle trees, seaweed, unpainted Armorcast resin bits, scratchbuilt medieval building, sci-fi bunkers
• Bunches of old (and new) rulebooks, codexes and army books
• And countless "grab bags" of random assorted sci-fi and fantasy stuff. Priced at $5 to $10 each, these packs were just so much fun to buy and we ended up handfuls of useful stuff.

Mark your calendars -- the next Games Plus auction will take place in a mere 6 months!

Where You'll Find Us This Weekend

The Games Plus gaming auction is upon us again! This twice-yearly event, which spans four days in March and October, is one of the highlights of CSW's event schedule. In the month leading up to each auction, gamers from around the Chicago area drop off unwanted or surplus game books, supplements, dice, miniatures, board games, terrain, hobby supplies and more. The stalwart staff of Games Plus organizes the many thousands of submission and will present them for auction this weekend.

Of course, the highlight for us is the miniatures day. The auction starts around 10 a.m. Sunday and continues nonstop until the last lot is sold -- typically around early evening. Painted and unpainted miniatures from every conceivable game and manufacturer are auctioned off, one after the other, at very attractive prices. Many members of Chicago Skirmish Wargames have personal stories about particularly sought-after miniatures or kits they've acquired at the auction.

If you're anywhere near the Chicago area on March 10, you really owe it to yourself to stop on by and check out the auction. That's where you'll find us on Sunday!

Pizza, plaster and paint: CSW hosts hobby night

Last week a few Chicago Skirmish Wargames members gathered at my home for an extended evening of hobbying. Drop-cloths descended, bins of supplies emerged from storage and we completely took over my dining room and kitchen. About midway through the evening we paused to order Chicago-style deep dish pizza from the place down the street, which gave us fuel to carry on and make some good progress on various projects.

At the first table, Pat was hard at work on a batch of Stonehaven Dwarves, which he recently received in the mail following a successful Kickstarter campaign. They had only been primed gray, but he managed to get three of them block painted and highlighted to the point where they were ready for the dip.

He then proceeded to put a second layer of paint on a batch of roads I had been working on. They are made of latex caulk spread in sections on hardboard, then sprinkled with just a bit of sand and painted brown. After a bit of dry brushing, we'll have some nice dirt roads for our wastelands. We'll have photos of these roads on the battlefield soon.

On the opposite side of the painting table, Mike was arranging his Imperial Guardsmen for an epic mass painting effort. A veteran of 3mm, 6mm, and spaceship fleet painting, Mike likes to paint in huge batches and today was no exception. He was painting the pants and sleeves on 60 Imperial Guardsmen! Here's some of the progress he made.

Across the room, Josh was hard at work building a set of hills. He is a bit new to terrain building, so we started with basic styrofoam hills. Despite a few mishaps with the foam cutter wires, he managed to carve and prep one section of hills, and he cut out a few more beyond that. The hills are made from a four-section styrofoam shelf display arrangement that was designed to display Lemax Christmas houses. I picked up the display at an after-Christmas sale for $4!

Josh also brought along a few Pegasus Hobbies Gothic Ruins that he had glued to hardboard triangles. He took this cool project to the next level, though, by beveling the edges of the baseboard and adding real broken ceramic tiles to the floor, then scattering kitty litter around for rubble. The end result is pretty great looking.

I really like the substantial look (big pillars, etc) of the Pegasus gothic buildings. They don't have as many bits and pieces, but they look good -- and the fact that they are not covered in skulls gives them a much wider appeal outside of Games Workshop battlefields.

Lastly, I worked on a bit of terrain that is sort of a bunker or mine entrance. It was originally sold as the "Brendam Dock Playset" from the Thomas the Tank Engine toy line. I found the main section for a buck or two at Goodwill. It's scaled nicely for 28mm figs, with the walkway being the perfect height for use a firing trench. It would have looked like this when new.

I removed the storage rails behind the garage door -- which still opens, by the way -- and I also chopped off the various tabs on the building where the railway and roadway would have been attached.

I added doors, fencing, a fuel tank and some other bits. The doors and hatches are all made from a bag of precut wood rectangles that I picked up from Michael's. They come in three fairly standard sizes, give or take a millimeter or two, making them an excellent option for cheap panels for sci-fi modeling.

It's since been primed and ballasted, but I'll do a post about it later. A great time was had by all, and a lot was accomplished. We've only managed to have three hobby gatherings in the nearly three years the club has existed, but I hope we can do this more often. Maybe deep dish pizza is the key?

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Looking back on 2012

We're feeling retrospective as 2012 comes to a close, so we felt like it might be a good idea to look back on a year of gaming in the Windy City.

The year began with the club ramping up our first concerted effort to produce a series of blog posts on a particular topic. In this case, it was 28mm on the Cheap, a series that aimed to dispel myths about the perceived expense of gaming in 28mm. It's our favorite scale, and we've got plenty of tips on how to avoid breaking your gaming budget. The series actually began in late 2011, but it really gathered steam in 2012. It was also an excuse for us to share some of our favorite makers and manufacturers of affordable minis! We also expanded it to talk about cheap, DIY terrain and vehicle conversions. It's now a regular feature on our blog.

In February, we got our hands on a playtest copy of Apocalypticum, a post-apocalyptic skirmish ruleset under development by Ganesha Games, publishers of the excellent Song of Blades & Heroes. If you follow this blog, you know that CSW has a soft spot for post-apoc gaming as well as Ganesha Games. We enjoyed the game and look forward to its eventual publication.

By April we were gearing up for our second appearance at Little Wars, an annual convention that takes place in suburban Chicago. In 2011 we ran a straightforward Song of Blades & Heroes scenario. This year, we aimed a little higher: post-apocalyptic highway carnage! Check out the battle report from the game to get an idea of how epic it was.

Later in the summer, we launched our first club campaign: The Iron Isle, a Song of Blades & Heroes fantasy epic! That link goes to a description of our campaign world, as well as battle reports from the 20-odd individual games we played over the course of the summer. It was a fantastic series of games, and the campaign really inspired us as a club to dig deep into the hobby. We painted miniatures and built terrain all summer long, buoyed by the fantastic games we were playing in the campaign.

It was around this time that our recruitment efforts began to pay off. We had regular gaming space available at Pat's house and Karl's house, and our small group soon grew to number 6 or 7 regular players. We're very excited to see new faces at CSW's regular game nights!

By September, we were beginning to talk about our winter campaign. The consensus was that we wanted to try out a full-blown post-apocalyptic campaign -- after all, we had the miniatures and we had the vehicles. Time to put 'em on the table! With this in mind, the terrain bug bit a few of us that fall. Pat started knocking out various post-apoc ruins and rubble bits. Karl converted a bag full of plastic farm buildings into a table's worth of industrial warehouses. He also snagged an architectural tabletop model at an auction and reconfigured it as an urban wargames table. Tim churned out a great collection of modular modern office buildings, as well as a batch of foamcore ruins and some plaster car wrecks.

We took a break from all this post-apoc prepping to host our second annual Halloween zombie game at Games Plus. Carnage in New Chicago, the sequel to 2011's Escape from New Chicago, allowed us to really one-up our previous game in a lot of ways. We had more terrain, more zombies and most importantly, more players!

We closed out 2012 by auditioning a number of rulesets for our upcoming post-apocalyptic campaign. We tried Neutron York 3000, In The Emperor's Name and This Is Not A Test, a work-in-progress ruleset that we are helping to playtest. We're leaning towards TNT, though our recent game raised enough questions that we decided to have another go at it in early January.

Thanks to all of our readers who took the time to post a question or comment -- and bonus points to everyone who came out to game with us in 2012. Watch this space as we head into 2013! We hope to share more photos, battle reports, tutorials and gaming fun with all of you.

-- The Players of Chicago Skirmish Wargames

Fully Painted: Void Junkers and Neo-Soviets

Last week I finished two groups of figures: a Neo-Soviet warband for our upcoming post-apocalyptic campaign and a huge batch of Void Junkers Legionnaires that will likely see use in may different games.

Neo-Soviets 

This project was initiated by my acquisition a couple weeks ago of 6 Soviet NKVD troopers from the 25 cent bin at Wolfcon. As with most of my impulse buys, I knew if I didn't get started on them it might be a while before they saw any paint, so I got right to work. The painting is my usual method: a quick spray with Rustoleum Camo Green, followed by base colors, a brush-dip of Minwax Polyshades Antique Walnut and a brush-on matte varnish.

The basing is just premixed wall plaster sculpted up to try and disguise the cast-on bases that are glued directly to the slotta. To their number I added a long-OOP Corporation Commander from Demonblade's now-defunct Shockforce game and a Neo-Soviet Rad Trooper figure from Vor: The Maelstrom

Here are some of the troopers.

They're NKVD figs from Black Tree Design and are apparently still available quite reasonably for less than $2 per figure.

These figures looked a bit small in the bin, but when I got them home, I found that they are 28mm to the eye. Their cast-on bases add a further bit of height, making them a good fit alongside more modern 28mm models that often stretch to 30mm.

They are stock except for backpacks that I ordered from Mega Minis. These are backpacks that normally come with their sci-fi trooper figures, but if you ask nicely they'll sell them separate.

Here is the commander figure and his enforcer/bodyguard/brute.

Though most Shockforce corporation figs have been re-released by Mega Miniatures as Frontier Defense Force, this Commander figure hasn't. I figure it's probably because the figure is so big -- he measures 33mm sole-to-eye without even counting his massive hat, making him significantly larger than most Shockforce troopers. Like most figures from the line, he's pretty clearly intended as a Games Workshop Imperial Guard proxy.

The Neo-Soviet Rad Trooper figure is still available from Iron Wind Metals. He's supposed to come with a backpack. Mine came in a random pile of loose lead, so he got one of same Mega Minis backpacks as the troopers.

These guys were finished in a week of spotty painting and will probably see the table next week as we continue to playtest In The Emperor's Name as our probable choice of rulsets for our upcoming post-apocalyptic campaign.

I'm especially happy with the effect that the Minwax Polyshades Tudor dip gives to their dark green uniforms.

Void Junkers 

I've been trying to finish these guys for the better part of a year now. I thought I'd get them done quickly by doing a batch of 47 figures at once, but that only made me enjoy the process less and procrastinate more. Anywho, they're done now!

Along with the basic troopers, there are 5 sergeants (guys without helmets), 1 chaingunner, 4 grenadiers, 5 flamethrowers and 2 figures with thermite lances that I'll be using as grenade launchers.

Fans of Void will note that these troopers are missing their shields. I've also noted their absence and somewhere in my house there's a bag of shields primed white and waiting for paint. I decided to paint the troopers anyway and deal with the shields when I find them. I think you'll agree that they don't look terrible sans shields.

They were painted with the same process as the Neo-Soviets, except they were primed with white gesso. The basing is simply sheetrock paint texture (finely crushed pumice) glued on, painted brown and dry-brushed.

I really rushed these guys, but they didn't turn out too bad. There are two figures with really bad pooling of the Minwax on the lower leg, but even that isn't very noticeable on the tabletop. So it's not my best work, but they do look quite impressive in a big group, which is how they'll likely be used. My Junker army now numbers more than 70 foot soldiers, a vehicle, 7 mounted cavalry and a couple other largish figures. Which means I'm a bit less than half finished!

As with the Neo-Soviets, I'm really liking the effect that the black pigmented Tudor shade has on miniatures. This was one of my first uses of it on lighter shaded figs (usually I use it for darker colors), and I'm very pleased. Here's a quick tip. After the Tudor dip has dried, if you find a few places where you missed, a bit of black paint mixed into matte medium gives you a nice thick-but-translucent mix that you can paint on to darken up the areas you missed.

The best news is that now my painting desk is cleared of in-progress projects, and I can start on my two next undertakings: a Squat army (yeah, you heard right...) and a post-apocalyptic salvage crew.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

We'd like to thank the Academy...

In recent weeks this humble blog has been honored by not one, but two Liebster Awards, meant to call attention to blogs that haven't yet built a critical mass of readers but nonetheless produce compelling, original content all the damn time. At least, that's how I understand the award, given CSW's prolific gaming/blogging schedule and our general enthusiasm for tabletop hobby games.

A key stipulation for new award recipients, though, is to pass along the Liebster Award to a few additional blogs that really ought to be read by more people. After polling the CSW player base, we assembled this list of worthy, yet criminally under-read, blogs.

• Warhammer For Adults -- Beginning with the tag line "Remember when Warhammer was a game and not a marketing tool?," WFA is focused on retro gaming and a bittersweet appreciation for the simpler era of the hobby. That fits really well with CSW's overall game philosophy, so we're happy to bestow a Liebster on WFA.
• Super Galactic Dreadnought -- With a name like that, it's got to be over the top. And it is! Desert Scribe shares his love for epic spaceship gaming on Super Galactic Dreadnought. Great painted miniatures, fantastic photos. If you've ever thought about spaceship gaming, just take a stroll through his site. Your imagination will catch fire!
  
• Mattblackgod's World -- Gonzo hobby gamer Mattblackgod is (mostly) focused on just one genre: post-apocalyptic sci-fi. He's an absolutely prolific modeler and painter, and most of his stuff appears in photo galleries on his site (and his old site). He also moderates the Post-Apoc Wargames forum, which is a real treasure trove of inspiration and discussion about all things post-apoc.
• Old School Miniatures Bulletin -- Here at CSW, we love old, vintage miniatures from the early days of fantasy gaming. Those old sculpts may be a bit lumpy, but they've got loads of character. Our friends at Old School Miniatures Bulletin agree with us, and it's always a treat to see what treasures they've dredged up from back when our hobby was young.
• Modern Appendix N -- Using Gygax's fabled Appendix N from the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide (which sets out various books, movies and art to help inspire DMs), the author has applied that mentality to the modern era. He offers up regular posts about contemporary fiction, miniatures, comics, etc.

 Give 'em a look -- you won't be disappointed!

Carnage in New Chicago: Our 2nd Annual Halloween Zombie Game

This week we hosted the second installment in our annual Halloween zombies game. For our initial effort last year, Tim (our zombie gamemaster) set the bar pretty high, with a walk-right-up-and-play urban horror game featuring desperate survivors and mindless zombies. This year, we turned the dial up to 11 with more terrain, more players -- and of course, more zombies. Here's the zombie pool that Tim used to populate our map.

For last year's game, we used All Things Zombie with a few modifications. This year, we used Blasters & Bulkheads, which did an excellent job simulating a small group of heavily armed heroes blasting their way through hordes of walking dead. B&B has a "henchmen" mechanic that was well-suited to running the zombies -- keeping them dangerous in big groups but also giving survivors a chance to escape.

We set up a tabletop with all sorts of urban terrain, including office buildings, abandoned military checkpoints and an industrial area with fences and warehouses. Here are a couple of the little vignettes that helped tell the story of the last days of New Chicago.

What's this? An abandoned medical supply depot? Who knows what's in those barrels...

And over here, it looks like the military fortified this office building against the oncoming horde. But where are they now...?

Prior to the start of the game, each player selected two armed survivor figures from a big pool of maybe 30 figures. Then Tim randomly generated each character's stats. They were assumed to be armed with exactly what the miniature was carrying -- little wonder, then, that the shotgun-wielding figures got selected first!

The players started their figures in a couple different board edges. Here a small group of survivors creeps onto the battlefield. By the end of the game, we had developed a persona for the guy in the tan coat -- his name was Jimmy Jaworsky, a tough-as-nails South Sider wearing a Bears jersey underneath his jacket. Yes, I put on my very best Chicago accent when it was Jimmy's turn to activate.

Across the board, Tom's two survivors found themselves in an abandoned industrial area. A warehouse loomed up ahead, so Tom sent Professor Paulsen -- an aging, tenured scholar from the University of New Chicago who nonetheless knows how to handle a shotgun -- to explore.

Tim came armed with plenty of random charts to aid in our looting efforts. In this case, Professor Paulsen stumbled across a handful of zombies -- and two survivors cowering behind a stack of crates! After Tom's two survivor characters dispatched the zombies, the two newcomers agreed to join the survivors, giving Tom two more figures to control for the remainder of the game.

To the north, a multi-story garage loomed against the darkened skyline. That's where Karl sent his two survivors, who were both clad in bright yellow biohazard suits. Perhaps they were scientists before the outbreak?

Inside the garage was a garbage truck, a formidable mode of transportation with the potential to squish dozens and dozens of zombies -- if only Karl could get the vehicle started! His attempts created a lot of noise, which brought even more moaning, groaning zombies to the scene.

As with last year's scenario, noise played an important role as the game unfolded. Fighting in melee, starting cars, shooting firearms -- all of these things generated noise, which in turn could attract zombies. Sometimes a gunshot or scuffle wouldn't result in any undue attention from the undead, but other times a half dozen zombies might show up, hungering for flesh.

Anyway, back to the game. Across the map, Jimmy Jaworsky was getting himself into a bit of trouble. He spotted a high-end sports car peeking out of a shipping container, and Jimmy decided that this was the ride that was going to get him out of New Chicago once and for all. But as he closed in on the vehicle, two small groups of walking dead stumbled after him...

Meanwhile Mike's two characters -- a grizzled military veteran and a plucky girl sidekick -- commandeered an old pickup truck, got it running, and began zooming across the map, splatting zombies left and right. 

They sideswiped a big mob of zombies that were harassing Jimmy, then skidded around a corner and headed off into the industrial sector to help out Karl's survivors.

And speaking of Karl's survivors -- they finally got the garbage truck up and running, but about a dozen zombies were thronging around the garage, pursuing two different groups of survivors.

By this point Karl's survivors had mobilized the garbage truck, and Mike's survivors were careening around the map in their pickup truck.

Poor Jimmy Jaworsky had gone to the big Polish sausage stand in the sky, though -- he was ripped apart and devoured by eight zombies as he attempted to hotwire an abandoned car. Professor Paulsen, too, went on permanent sabbatical, as he was dismembered by zombies in the industrial sector. Luckily Tom's other survivors proved particularly adept at self-preservation, and they emerged onto the streets to meet the garbage truck saviors.

We called the game there, as Games Plus was about to close. Everyone had plenty of praise for the scenario and for Tim's gamemastering. The game was fun, bloody, exciting and grim, just like any zombie apocalypse game should be! Here's the final photo, showing the garbage truck plowing into a mob of zeds.

Doubtless we'll run a zombie game next Halloween. Until then!


-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member